Emerald City Gymnastics Academy

I have received a message: «Did you know that ECGA has some of the TOP athletes in the Region? I am sorry you had a bad experience and wish you would have brought it to the attention of the ownership before spreading inaccurate information.»
Personal experience — is an inaccurate information?
Well, it might have the best athletes in the area, but it doesn’t make them good teachers. My daughter has been attending other facility for a few weeks now, and she does amazing things that she wasn’t taught during her year in this place. She also attended a week long summer camp in a different gymnastics facility, and the results were clearly visible. A week!
During the end year show here the parents around me were saying the following (in different languages that I happen to understand), and I quote: «I am so glad my husband isn’t here to witness this! He would have been very upset we paid for it all year long…» and husband to wife: «seriously? you dragged me here for this!!! and you paid $ 30 for her outfit? what did she do here all year long? She doesn’t know a single move!»
The best about the place is its convenient location. Yes, I know parents who still attend it because of this, since there isn’t much in the area. I also know parents who prefer to drive to Lynnwood, twice a week, for 4 years, because a convenient location is not good enough for them.
To be fair it is fun for the kids, but from personal experience you can get more results for your buck elsewhere. A personal experience can not be classified as «inaccurate information».

This place is amazing! If you are looking for your child to learn bars, talent on the trampoline or floor play such as cartwheels, handstands etc, this is the place to go. There is a couch with every age group and different levels. Each couch is there to help each child learn and succeed in many different talents. Each child learns at their own pace and the couches know this, so they work with each individual child to master tallents. great place! And fun for children.

We’ve been coming here for several years now– both for the once a week class and summer camps.
On the summer camp side– our kids have had nothing but awesome experiences and they really love it. We would continue with these.
On the gymnastics side– we finally have decided to stop coming here. When we first started and for quite awhile– my daughter had the same coach and it was great. She knew my daughters strengths and weaknesses and worked with her each session getting her ready to move up to Silver. Ever since moving to Silver and that coach leaving– it’s been a never ending spinning door of coaches– some who clearly have no clue what they are doing. One caused multiple girls to end up in tears one class and with several having ice packs because they hurt their wrists… After yet another change of coach we decided enough was enough. If you want your child’s skills to grow and advance you need stability in the staff working with them– and you need them to also know what it takes and how to do things. I imagine it’s super hard for them to find qualified staff– but something has to change to provide them with that stability.

Consider this place if only:
1. Your child is young and you just need some indoor activity to burn off her/​his energy; and
2. You don’t want your child to be competitive gymnast
DO NOT consider this place if:
1. You want your child to become a competitive gymnast; and/​or
2. You want structured/​challenging lesson in a small group
Although most of the coaches/​staff are friendly, there are a couple of coaches who should not be around the kids. Coach Caila often manhandles her students (who are only at the age of 3.5−4.5yrs old) and I’ve never seen actually smile while coaching. There are some coaches who are nicer but most of them are either in high-​school (or at least they look/​act like it) or college. The facility is super packed, too.

Staff is friendly. I love how organized the classes are for my young girls. We do the munchkins and mini munchkins class. We’ve been very happy with our weekly classes, my girls know what to expect and really enjoy themselves.

I wish I would’ve Unilocaled this place before I tried it for my 9 yo son. It was PACKED in this place. You can’t even walk through some of the places. I thought that might be a good sign for the quality but there was a high school aged kid teaching NINE 9 – 11 year old boys so while he was helping one child the other 8 were running around goofing off. At 25 minutes into this hour class and having seen none of the kids even do one thing with equipment yet, I went to the front desk where the girl seemed irritated that I would have an issue. She said that seemed right to her — that it’s normal for them to do 15 – 20 min of warm up then another 5+ min to explain the stations. Then at the stations they were left alone to do whatever while the instructor helped one kid at a time. The last 15 min they jumped on the trampoline.

My children have been attending ECGA for several months. I have a 5 yr old in munchkins and a 6 yr old in the boys program. Both my son and daughter have excelled during their time with their instructors. From my experience, each class has kids moving at all times, each working on something different. The boys do parallel bars, pommel horse, and rings. The munchkins class focuses on fundamentals of gymnastics. My kids love going there and I think the price is great.

I can see where other complaints are coming from, but for the price, I’m not exactly sure what people are expecting. Young children learning the basics don’t need anyone too advanced to teach beginning skills. This is NOT dance, where you can have an entire class doing the same thing all together.
The nature of change in the schedules of college age young adults each quarter makes the staff turnover very understandable. We have enjoyed each coach and they are doing a great job of giving my daughter confidence and teaching skills she can’t/won’t learn from me. I have never seen the staff not engaged with the kids– to the contrary, they learn their names quickly and assist/​spot on various activities as needed.

Ridiculously crowded and inexperienced staff, as other reviewers have noted. But my biggest problem is the incompetent record keeping. The same high school girls «teaching» gymnastics run the front desk. They fail to enter things in the computer system, lose receipts, and charge for things you didn’t buy. They charged me three times for the same leotard and tuition for a month after we stopped attending. It’s run incompetently and they desperately need a professional manager and staff.